Alcohol, “rape culture,” taxation, and libertarianism

Robby Soave of Reason’s Hit & Run pokes fun at some feminists so fixated on the gender dynamics underlying physical and sexual violence against women that they want to deny the role of alcohol. Fair comment, I suppose, though it seems to me that Soave’s colleague Elizabeth Nolan Brown offers a more sensible interpretation of the “rape culture” idea. (The tendency to give other people’s words trivial and vicious interpretations rather than looking for sensible interpretations of them must rank very high on the blogosphere’s list of besetting sins.)

And of course there’s no reason why acquaintance rape, like other phenomena, shouldn’t have more than one cause. In a culture whose ideas about masculinity involved less sexual score-keeping and less tolerance for violence, alcohol use might be associated with less rape; at the same time, in the culture we actually have (which feminists, with little enough help from the Robby Soaves of the world, are trying to change) less use of alcohol (both by those who become perpetrators and by those who become victims) would probably also lead to less rape. There’s no contradiction there, just the acceptance of a multi-causal world. Nor does pointing to the role of alcohol diminish the culpability of the rapist; the rape may well have been done under the influence, but the decision to get drunk (and, frequently, to encourage the intended seducee/victim to become drunk) was made by a sober man, or – often enough – a sober adolescent trying to pretend he’s a man.

That said, I’m grateful to Soave for pointing out the role of alcohol, and to the editors of Hit & Run for publishing the piece. Now that we’ve agreed that alcohol is a key factor in rape, as it is in homicide and motor vehicle fatality, the question is what to do about it. The obvious answer, if one believes in markets, is to raise the price of alcohol by taxation.

But of course the official libertarian line is that taxing alcohol would be unfair to those drinkers who aren’t drunken rapists or drunken brawlers or drunken drivers. Any unfairness to rape victims from low alcohol taxes is simply the price of a free society. (Oh, and alcohol taxation is also “regressive,” which you must admit is a weighty argument from people who hate progressive taxation.)

Where does that leave us? Why, with vacuous prescriptions about “fostering” “a teen culture of responsible alcohol consumption,” for example by “lowering the drinking age.”

But of course that’s all moonshine, with the marketing and political muscle of the booze industries solidly lined up against anything that might foster moderation in alcohol use, even if we knew how to do so. And of course limiting the commercial and political “free speech” of the people who make their money selling products that kill 90,000 people a year and send hundreds of thousands to emergency rooms, rape crisis centers, and prison cells would be unthinkable.

So what’s a libertarian to do? Why, make fun of feminists! That’s always safe.